Cours du 30/11/10 - 2/6

3/ Film Language
[today, the film can be read as a commentary on the novel-sourcetext]

For the film to be a commentary on the book, it needs a specific language.

Christian Metz Essai sur la signification au cinéma, langage et cinéma (1971)
specificity of the film language & grammar.
Equates the shot with a word, scene/sentence, sequence/paragraph, whole film/text.
He tries to qualify this idea, saying that there is a difference between 'un langage et une langue' (pas de langue filmique, cinéma peut s'exprimer mais doit emprunter langues existantes).
No « langue » = no syntax ? = he will write about the « syntagmatique » of cinema. (syntagme/paradigme)
There is a language using different aesthetic forms that you can combine in different ways.

Question of the minimal unity of a shot.
He says that a shot is already composed with diff. elements from the real wordl itself.
We can used our language to describe what is in this shot.

Questions of the film language. How does a shot really tells us something ? Is it supposed to do so ? Visual dimension (+verbal semantic) = linguistic.


4/ Andrew Higson
He coined the term 'heritage movie ' = new genre in English cinema (1980's) based on the aesthetic of display.

Adaptation in the U.K., H.James, E.M. Forster, J. Austen = bad adaptations, because only based on display.
Critics of J.Ivory's films : he insisted on locations, on how Britain was better before, nostalgia, but leaving aside the novel = only a postcard of the book = a false image of Britain. Visual splendor of those films, but not literary enough.

He implies that a good adaptation should not just illustrate the different locations (geographical details) but should reconstruct and use them to transmit the message of the text – when films don't do that, they are lacking in narration.

=> pictorialist use of the camera (long & medium shots).

We can wonder if an adaptation that is only a display is really an adaptation at all?
For Higson = just a postcard.


II.Adaptation & narration


How does a film narrates a story ?
Notion of fidelity. Film seen as a text with a plot.
Who is narrating the film ? How narration is unfolding in the film ?

2 main & contradicting theories.

Chatman : for him there is a cinematic narrator to be seen / heard in all the aesthetic choices (visual / soundtrack) = mise en scène, frame, location, use of light & color, mvt within the frame & camera and editing. Soundtrack : music, noises, voices.
Someone decided to do this or that = work of a narrator.
Every visual aspect in a film is supposed to make sense.
But difficult to know who made the choices + is that person really a narrator ?
= central idea for adaptation.

Can you use cinematic science to adapt a text narration ? What about the style, tone, irony ?
To Chatman it is possible to do that in an adaptation.

Bordwell ; approach between perspectivism & constructivism (one element in common = the audience & the recipient of the work of art )

- perspectivism = théorie de la forme
Marcel Duchamp, Picasso = the way you perceive the work of art modifies it.

- constructivism = you will make a work of art yours and give it a new direction.

Reception theory (for fiction & film)
distortion of the meaning of the film based on the reception of the audience. Interaction with a film (different roles to play), with cinema, a film needs to have some physical
existence (diff. drama, theater, paintings...) = specific interaction, own personnal reception of the film (similar to music?).

'enter the film ', empty spaces that are here for the spectator to get in.

Bordwell insists on the capital rôle of the spectator. Disagree with Chatman = for him, there is a narration but no one is behind it : « something is narrated in the film' – passive form. Spectator might be the narrator of the film, by giving meaning to a shot with his reception of the film.[b]